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Monday, 10 June 2013

Bronze, Rubber and Rice

The commodities market has always been
a bit of a mystery to me, the buying and selling of futures in metals or foodstuffs;
fortunes made and lost. I suppose it depends on your social standing which ones
have importance to you in real life too.

Politicians and civic leaders are fond
of monuments and landmark buildings, their constituents more often than not
with feeding and clothing their children. This is certainly true in the area I
live in, near Manila bay.

Along the sea front there is a
walk-way and dotted along it are a series of bronze sculptures of various
people, from General McArthur, to a sea captain, various political figures, and
one of a ‘typical’ Filipino family gathered together enjoying each others
company.

Many people live by the sea, under the
trees or tarpaulin canopies, often whole families and from time to time pieces
of the bronze statues are chipped off and find their way to junk shops to be
weighed in and sold for money to buy rice most probably. I found the sculpture
of the Filipino family to be most striking in this regard. All the arms are
missing, the little girl is gone now except for one foot, even the dog’s tail
is gone.

A clash of priorities between state
and people but a minor one compared to the latest. The recently passed Reproductive
Health bill, in partaims to provide
free condoms and other contraceptives to the people (the poor people). The
estimated budget for this is 3 Billion pesos.

Not really in keeping with the culture
of a country that is 90% catholic, 5 % other denominations and 5% muslim.
Perhaps some enterprising people will recycle them or sell them back unused to
the suppliers and there will be some benefit, otherwise a total misuse of
public funds to no positive end.

I am reminded of stories I heard from
Africa, where rural clinics were pilled high with contraceptives people didn’t
want (as its not part of their culture either) but had no medicines at all for
the real needs of the people.

Supporters believe the reduction in
population will eliminate poverty. As if overpopulation was related to their
poverty; with most of the wealth of the nation in the hands of a small minority
here, and everyone else scrambling for as much as they can get, poverty is much
more related to inequalities in distribution of wealth not a lack of it or an
excess of people. But that is an inconvenient truth. So many measures like
these around the world; the imposition of lesser values, are little more than a
smoke screen for greed to flourish without having to look at the consequences.